Rush came to the aid of a woman whose cell phone was snatched Wednesday night, chasing the perp down an alley and helping to recover the phone.

According to Kathleen Joyce, director of government relations for the Boston Bar Association, a man grabbed her iPhone as she was speaking on it and made off with it. Rush, in a pickup truck with another passenger, cornered the thief as he fled down Tremont Place and gave chase on foot.

“Nobody stopped to help me and out of the blue a truck came by,” Joyce told the News Service.

The thief made it over the fence before Rush could catch up to him, Joyce said, but he dropped the phone in the process.

After at first demurring and saying that “whatever Kathleen said happened happened,” Rush told the News Service that he was riding as a passenger with a friend down Beacon Street on the way to meet others for dinner when, he said, he saw what appeared to be someone grabbing something from a woman and running down Beacon Street.

Rush said he and his friend pursued the robber, with his friend pulling his vehicle into the alley that leads to the Granary Burial Ground. Rush said he ran after the man and went up and over a wall after him before he got away. While his friend was calling 911, Joyce showed up and explained that the man had grabbed her phone out of her hand while she was talking on it.

“At that point I looked down and saw that the kid had either dropped or threw the phone,” said Rush, who picked up the phone and returned it to Joyce.

Rush said that if the same thing happened to his wife or a family member, he hoped others would act as he did.